No Arabic abstract
We consider the initialization of the spin-state of a single electron trapped in a self-assembled quantum dot via optical pumping of a trion level. We show that with a magnetic field applied perpendicular to the growth direction of the dot, a near-unity fidelity can be obtained in a time equal to a few times the inverse of the spin-conserving trion relaxation rate. This method is several orders-of-magnitude faster than with the field aligned parallel, since this configuration must rely on a slow hole spin-flip mechanism. This increase in speed does result in a limit on the maximum obtainable fidelity, but we show that for InAs dots, the error is very small.
We demonstrate fast initialization of a single hole spin captured in an InGaAs quantum dot with a fidelity F>99% by applying a magnetic field parallel to the growth direction. We show that the fidelity of the hole spin, prepared by ionization of a photo-generated electron-hole pair, is limited by the precession of the exciton spin due to the anisotropic exchange interaction.
We propose a technique to initialize an electron spin in a semiconductor quantum dot with a single short optical pulse. It relies on the fast depletion of the initial spin state followed by a preferential, Purcell-accelerated desexcitation towards the desired state thanks to a micropillar cavity. We theoretically discuss the limits on initialization rate and fidelity, and derive the pulse area for optimal initialization. We show that spin initialization is possible using a single optical pulse down to a few tens of picoseconds wide.
The preparation of a coherent heavy-hole spin via ionization of a spin-polarized electron-hole pair in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot in a Voigt geometry magnetic field is investigated. For a dot with a 17 ueV bright-exciton fine-structure splitting, the fidelity of the spin preparation is limited to 0.75, with optimum preparation occurring when the effective fine-structure of the bright-exciton matches the in-plane hole Zeeman energy. In principle, higher fidelities can be achieved by minimizing the bright-exciton fine-structure splitting.
We describe theoretically the resonant optical excitation of a trion with circularly polarized light and discuss how this trion permits the read-out of a single electron spin through a recycling transition. Optical pumping through combination of circularly polarized optical $pi$--pulses with permanent or $pi$-- pulsed transverse magnetic fields suggests feasible protocols for spin initialization.
We study the loading of electrons into a quantum dot with dynamically controlled tunnel barriers. We introduce a method to measure tunneling rates for individual discrete states and to identify their relaxation paths. Exponential selectivity of the tunnel coupling enables loading into specific quantum dot states by tuning independently energy and rates. While for the single-electron case orbital relaxation leads to fast transition into the ground state, for electron pairs triplet-to-singlet relaxation is suppressed by long spin-flip times. This enables the fast gate-controlled initialization of either a singlet or a triplet electron pair state in a quantum dot with broad potential applications in quantum technologies.